Jorge Pérez Vega: Jesús Martínez: A brief recollection of a career

▲ Etching, part of the series Time for Sacrifice (1997). Photo taken from the book Jesús Martínez: Passion for Engraving

In memory of the great friend, Engraver, painter and photographer, teacher born in 1942 in Los Sauces, municipality of León de los Aldama, in the state of Guanajuato, I have reworked a previous text.

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Visiting a retrospective exhibition encourages reflection on a journey, as well as reminiscing about the times we've lived together. I met Jesús Martínez in the intaglio workshop led by Francisco Moreno Capdevila, in 1966, the year in which the former San Carlos Academy was experiencing intense activity due to the climate generated by a university student movement seeking educational reform, organized through a student council at Ciudad Universitaria. Aside from the political undercurrent of this action, which led to the fall of Rector Ignacio Chávez, the community of students and professors at the National School of Plastic Arts had specific academic and administrative demands, which led us to continue the strike: consulting with professional artists, developing proposals, and negotiating solutions.

Young people from political and cultural groups expressed themselves on national and international events, so we learned about political prisoners, such as Demetrio Vallejo, the release of David Alfaro Siqueiros, the Cuban Revolution, and the Vietnam War, but also about the publications of the Nueva Presencia group, known as the neo-humanists or interiorists (Arnold Belkin and Francisco Icaza, etc.). There was a lively discussion between traditional figuration and new trends; the Taller de Gráfica Popular was divided and contributed nothing. What would later be called the Rupture Generation began to emerge, through exhibitions and provocative statements sponsored by American and local cultural institutions. At the same time, solitary artists continued to work, removed from the antagonism of nationalists and cosmopolitans . In a different sense, at that time, contemporary graphic art from Poland, Yugoslavia, and Chile caught our attention.

In mid-1967, the Nuevos Grabadores group, promoted by Capdevila and featuring Federico Ávila, Susana Campos, Carlos García, Ignacio Manrique, Jesús Martínez, and Carlos Olachea, appeared at the Casa del Lago galleries of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The following year, the group expanded with the addition of Valdemar Luna, Leo Acosta, Benjamín Domínguez (almost all of whom have since passed away), and J.A. Pérez Vega. Already participating in exhibitions at the National Polytechnic Institute of Zacatenco and other galleries in what was then Mexico City and San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, the maestro left us young artists and ceased to exhibit. However, most of the members went to France, and the group practically disbanded.

At the same time, the student movement of 1968 brought together students and a few teachers. On July 26, Jesús Martínez and I suspended our activities at the painting studio of the Spanish Republican master Antonio Rodríguez Luna, and upon leaving, we learned of the clashes in the streets between students and police forces. The National School of Plastic Arts (ENAP) joined the strike. As is well known, the San Carlos/UNAM and La Esmeralda/National Institute of Fine Arts campuses produced the largest and best number of propaganda images for the National Strike Council. For example, the banner depicting a dove pierced by a bayonet, made with a stencil and inked roller, plus a red stain on gray cardboard, by the young engraver from Guanajuato, is a good example.

Following the tragic outcome of that day of social struggle in 1969, our friend would print the portfolio of 10 prints "No consta en actas" (Not Consisting in Minutes), complemented by 10 poems by Juan Bañuelos. With this graphic work, he would materialize his artistic testimony of 1968, integrating the traditional technique of intaglio with the photoengraving he used during his work at the newspaper El Sol de Celaya (a process he shared with Mario Olmos, Aarón Cruz, and me). Also that year, his first solo exhibition of graphic work was held at the French Institute of Latin America (IFAL), adding the following quote to its catalog: "...contemporary painting has reached the extreme barrier where the dissolution of traditional forms allows us to glimpse the flashing of a new figurativeness no longer based on the ancient imitation of the external world, but derived from proprioceptive projection, from man's innermost will to form" (Gillo Dorfles in his book The Becoming of the Arts.)

In 1972, he was appointed printmaking instructor by Óscar Oliva to the nascent Department of Cultural Diffusion at the Autonomous University of Puebla. On that occasion, he invited me to teach painting and silkscreen printing in the visual arts workshop, where the students held a group exhibition.

From the beginning of his creative process, due to his relationship of friendship and camaraderie with poets and his interest in popular culture, poetry was always present as an enriching element of his themes. In another aspect, he was an observer and student of the ideas and arts of our ancestral civilizations. Therefore, it can be said that as early as 1976, his intention to recreate the pre-Hispanic imagery in various works, including his paintings, was evident, without resorting to obvious or simplistic solutions. In 1982, he presented the exhibition of etchings, Region of Smoke , at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, which would consolidate his aesthetic vision. It is worth considering the fact, among other factors, that, as a result of recent archaeological discoveries and their respective analyses, our past is being better revalued; perhaps for this reason, when the fifth centenary of the encounter between Europe and America was celebrated in 1992, themes related to the pre-Hispanic were more recurrent in contemporary artistic pursuits. However, Martínez had traveled that path many years before with very valuable and innovative results in his expression.

Achieving through experience the mastery of his craft and a clear conception of his work, various series of graphic work in special editions or in exhibitions such as Estampas de relación, Agua grabado, Tema de tonos and Cal y canto, taking into account in a certain way as a premise his own words said during an interview with Angelina Camargo in 1982: I try to make the public find an identification with our culture, as a way of defending ourselves from the ideological aggression that we suffer and of keeping ourselves integrated as a people who know where they come from and where they are going .

In the field of research into his field of work, it is important to highlight his concern with recovering and recording the developments in his visual discipline, given the lack of publications on the subject, and to celebrate his biography José Julio Rodríguez, Engraver , and the two volumes of The History of Engraving , published by the Guanajuato State Institute of Culture. Also in 1996, Jesús Martínez, authored by Gutierre Aceves, was released.

In September 1994, at the San Carlos Museum, he was appointed a full member of the Academy of Arts, and was welcomed by graphic artist Alberto Beltrán.

Contemplating his large, acid-etched landscapes very freely in this retrospective takes us back to Chucho's starting point, as we affectionately called him, assimilating the teachings of the master Francisco Moreno Capdevila in his constant practice as an engraver and printer for more than 40 years, and also as an assistant teacher and later, heir and responsible owner of that workshop in San Carlos and later at ENAP-Xochimilco and the subsequent Faculty of Art and Design, thus contributing to the training of new talents in order to continue the graphic tradition of our country.